I appreciate these comments; the discussion thread confirms to me that this is not just a trivial issue within Lazarus. Out of necessity after experiencing numerous complications during the early learning curve on the IDE, I have come up with a method of protecting the work and keeping each project and version separate and free from errors. It may certainly be convoluted to the members, as it is to me, but at least it is working for me. My general steps/methods are now:
1. I work with the project mode now, to create, work, and save.
2. I make sure that the "working directory for test files" is now set BEFOREHAND within options to the actual directory the project will reside in. Only then do I actually load up the project and compile and save, and then I do not have any problems with crossovers anymore. The only real catch is that Lazarus does not allow me to do this separately beforehand before loading the project (so far here..) so I work with a dummy example project to allow me to get into the options window first. After it is set properly, then and only then do I load my project. I know this has to be peculiar, but so be it for now since it at least works and I no longer have the numerous headaches from first uses of Lazarus.
3. I am having no problems any more of this nature, each project is separate, and compilation is finally contained within one place where I know what it is.
4. I suspect there will be comments to improve this process, but I needed something to work after all the initial problems I was having. I do think Lazarus could benefit from cleaning up the backup procedure; not unreasonable to anticipate a button that says backup, and get clean results along the way.
Thanks for comments, at least the work has become peaceful, fun and constructive again, but not so when the first level of chaos erupted with the program structure being torn asunder because of ignorance here.
Best regards, CEC
PS: HowardPC, a special thanks for your comments and suggestions; they are very much in accord with what I have decided to do here and it seems to work fine. CEC